Viva, Rose!

Fourteen-year-old Rose, a member of a traditional Russian Jewish family living in 1915 El Paso, has already been told more than one version of her older brother Abraham's whereabouts, but after she spots him in a newspaper photo of the "notorious gang of Mexican outlaw Pancho Villa," she tries to send him a message to convince him to come home. In the process, she witnesses an interaction she shouldn't and is kidnapped to keep her quiet. Rose keeps trying to escape, but in between attempts, her time at Pancho Villa's camp brings new perspectives about his citizen army and its mission. The prose is sometimes flowery, and the plucky-girl-chasing-excitement trope is nothing new, but this novel complicates that trope somewhat and places it within a combination of cultures not often seen in historical fiction. (At an improvised Seder involving tortillas, Rose draws connections between the Passover story and "those enslaved Mexican people.") Appended notes give information about the Mexican Revolution and also identify the liberties Krawitz has taken in this story, which was inspired by her own relatives. Spanish and Yiddish glossaries are appended. shoshana flax